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(How) Can classic literary texts be re-read from a subversive feminist perspective? And moreover, can those texts be re-interpreted/re-written? In order to answer these questions I focus on two novels: The Penelopiad (orig. 2005), by Margaret Atwood, and Weight (orig. 2005), by Jeanette Winterson. The official version of these myths ... read more has been previously accepted as aletheia, or the truth. This feminist re-writing shows that those myths had never been properly understood and, consequently, the official version does not match what really happened (though in fiction). The first person narration to tell the stories, along with the rhetorical irony, imposes a distant perspective of those myths. Even the feminist parody in those texts reaches the classical Aristotelian poetics, which deals with the differences between the historical genre and the other genres, as well as the problem of the verisimilitude. Now, at the beginning of 21st century, the history is suspicious: what has been accepted must be put into question. The feminist fiction makes up the events to open new interpretations highlighting areas that had remained in semi-darkness in the previous transmission. Since absolute knowledge is impossible, since forgetting is inevitable, Atwood and Winterson suggest another (way of) reading. They offer variations; and alter the perspective in the stories in order to get new insights of what (in fiction) could have happened.
Regarding methodological issues, I distinguish between methods and methodology. I do not think that there are specific feminist methods, that is to say tools we use in order to construct our research. But there is definitely a feminist approach to those tools, that is a particular discourse that sustains both our methods and the relevance of our research question. This distinction between methods and methodology is useful to tackle any kind of research, as well as it allows a sort of distance in relation to the tools themselves and the approach with which those tools can be used. Therefore I used discursive analysis by means of deconstructing and questioning different instances. At the same time that applying one methodology, I intend to show how a certain methodology, any methodology is in fact, always used in the very process of making fiction. In terms of epistemology, meaning how I am in relation to the knowledge, the discursive region where I locate myself is a post-structuralist feminist one. This way of reading (a post-structuralist feminist one) enables me to see the different levels in the discourse, assuming that a text is a multi-layered space where not just meaning, but also the syntax and the rhetoric of ‘silence’ are at stake. show less

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